Presentation of gifts

Sri Chinmoy: Two loving hearts: the Puerto Rican heart and the Indian heart. This evening the Indian heart is extremely happy and proud that it has been given by God, the Author of all good, the golden opportunity to offer its concern, love, appreciation, admiration and joy in abundant measure to the Puerto Rican heart.

Highly esteemed brother, I am truly fortunate that I have visited your home four times in the short span of a year. Each time you and your wife have shown me flowing generosity from the very depth of your hearts, and illumining luminosity from your souls’ effulgent light. Therefore, to both of you I offer my gratitude-heart from the garden of my service-life.

(Sri Chinmoy presents Governor Hernández Colón several gifts for himself and his wife, including a straw hat, symbol of the Governor’s political party.)

These are my earthly gifts to you. I have only one heavenly gift and that heavenly gift I wish to offer you in soulful silence.

My soulful prayer is this: your victory, your continuous victory, your constant victory in the Universal Heart of the Almighty, to please Him, manifest Him and fulfil Him in an unprecedented way. Victory to you, victory to the Supreme Pilot in you, victory to the Universal Brother in you.

Governor Hernández Colón: Thank you Sri Chinmoy and all of you for this wonderful evening that we have had together. When your spiritual Master visited me and invited me to come to visit you when I was in New York, I never expected that I would have such a reception to greet me and such a presentation to honour, perhaps not me, but the people that I represent. I thank you on behalf of the good people of Puerto Rico whom you have honoured here tonight through our national anthem, through the presentation of our flag, through the song that Sri Chinmoy has written for Puerto Rico and through all the other manifestations of our people. I thank you on behalf of all of them for the love and the appreciation that you have shown to them and to me on this occasion.

May I tell you that you are very fortunate. You are very fortunate that you have a spiritual Master like Sri Chinmoy here close to you, that you have his guidance and are able to develop spiritually beside him. He is a Master of the spirit, but he is not detached from the world. He lives in this world as you and I do, and yet the sanctity in him and the deep spirituality which he embodies is present wherever he is.

As Governor of Puerto Rico, I have been fortunate to have him visit our home on four occasions. I know that you have quite a few Centres in Puerto Rico, I know that you have established Centres throughout the world, and I know of the great mission of spirituality, of beauty, of joy which Sri Chinmoy, your spiritual Master, has brought to all those Centres and to all of those whom he has touched. I also know of his work as an artist. I know the beauty of his work because one of his paintings is in our own living room as a result of a gift that he made to us on the occasion of my birthday. I also know of his great work in the United Nations and his efforts in helping the United Nations gain the spiritual direction that it needs to cope with the problems of the world today. It is indeed a very hard task, but if there is any one person with devotion and deep spirituality who can carry this task to fruition, it is Sri Chinmoy. Therefore, it is not only you and those at your Centres, but also those at the United Nations who are very fortunate to have him, who are very fortunate to be able to aspire towards greater light with him and through him.

Tonight you have been very generous to me and to my wife, Lila. You have been generous to the Puerto Rican people. I thank you on their behalf and I leave with you my conviction that these Centres will continue to grow as the spiritual power of Sri Chinmoy grows and spreads throughout the world. May his work at the United Nations gain fruition so that this body may also realise the highest mission which he has for all mankind.

[Thunderous standing ovation]

[Sri Chinmoy presents the Governor with a commemorative plaque. The garland and straw hat are other gifts from Sri Chinmoy.]